f one of your ancestors is a Dorenbos, you came to the right
place.This is where you can find your
ancestor’s roots as far back as identifiable names and public records
permit.You will readily see who all
your Dorenbos relatives are, and how they fit together as part of your now
instantly extended personal family tree.

The Dorenbos Family
Database integrates the Dorenbos birth, marriage, and death statistics buried
in countless local church and civil archives throughout the Netherlands and
beyond.It is a work in progress as new
information and new information sources turn up, either through further
research by the author or from contributions from interested volunteers.Initially the emphasis has been on the Netherlands,
presumably the origin country of our name (though Germany is also likely).The plan is to extend the database to trace
Dorenbos emigrants and their descendants to Germany,the United States, and the rest of the world.

There is only one
requirement for inclusion in this database: the surname Dorenbos, regardless of
how it is spelled (see sidebar) or how it was acquired.You get an honorable mention if you are married to a Dorenbos, but to preserve
our focus on the Dorenbos name, any further research into spouses and other
significant others is left to you.Links
to other databases are supported and encouraged (see Feedback,
below).

Names

A surname can be acquired
in several ways:

(1) through paternal inheritance (the
traditional way),

(2) through maternal inheritance (by
choice or by the absence of an acknowledged father),

(3) by assumption from a step- or
adoptive parent, or

(4) simply by choice—typically during
the official, pre-1812 Europe-wide drive to ensure that all families have
permanent surnames for better identification.

Before 1812, patronymic
names were the rule among Dutch citizens.Patronymic names had the form

<givenname><father’s-givenname><suffix>

(Example: Jan Pieters, or Jan, son
of Pieter)

and resulted in vast
numbers of unrelated people with the same names—a genealogist’s nightmare.The use of surnames reduces these ambiguities
to relatively small numbers of possibilities.

Even after taking on a
surname, most families continued with the patronymic tradition within their new
identity for the next few generations, which turned out to be very helpful for
genealogists when piecing together family trees at times and places where
records are fragmentary, since patronyms are useful hints in determining
parentage within families.

For more information
regarding the history of Dutch surnames and civil registration, see

Patronymic conversions to
Dorenbos account for most of the 100-odd separate family trees in our
database.Of the remaining trees, a handful
are limited in depth only by the church records that survive today in the areas
where the earliest known Dorenbos’s lived (16th-century Groningen
Province), and probably go back much farther than that.The database still contains a few trees of indeterminate
origin, but I am hopeful that these, too, will be resolved soon.

Data Sources

The major sources of data
for this project were the numerous local municipal archives throughout the
Netherlands.Most have comprehensive
birth, marriage, and death records for the entire population of the Netherlands
since 1812, when mandatory civil registration laws,including the requirement for family
surnames, went into effect—all initiated by Napoleon and retained after his
ouster.Most of these records have
already been indexed for computer access and are now available online at no
cost.

Prior to 1812, only a few
municipalities recorded birth, marriage, death, and/or residency information of
their subjects, and even those were spotty and incomplete.To fill this gap in their pre-1812 archives,
Dutch municipalities have turned to the best source of such information: church
registers of past baptisms, marriages, and burials, sometimes going back as far
as the 16th century.As of
today, many of these registers have already been indexed and are available
online along with the post-1812 data.

Despite everyone’s best
efforts, many gaps remain.Lost files
and records, recording mistakes, deficient standards, spelling issues, indexing
errors, and data-compiling screw-ups (mine) all contribute to the difficulty of
making sense of this overabundance of data.One of the goals of this project
is to navigate this thicket just once, for the benefit of all those interested
in identifying their Dorenbos ancestors.

Another cause of incompete
data are the Dutch privacy laws.Birth
and marriage data are made available to these databases only after 100 years
have passed, and deaths records, after 50 years.If you are looking for a recent
relative, this website is not the best place to look.

Getting Started…

Before you start
searching, take a little time to browse the database and become familiar with the notation.Then read Search Tips to help you choose the best strategy for
finding your relative in this database.If you don’t find him/her right away, try different strategies, as
suggested in that link.

As indicated earlier,
collaboration with other interested family researchers is essential for the
integrity and completeness of this database.All are urged to contribute to this database in any of the following
ways:

1)Report any Dorenbos relative you
cannot locate in this database!

2)Fill in missing information, such as a date or a spouse.

3)Insert missing family members, such as children or siblings, or an
additional marriage.

4)Correct any mistaken data item or family relationship (location in the
tree).

5)Confirm or correct a red (“best-guess”) entry in the
database.

6)Spelling is always an issue.Should it be the “correct” spelling, the recorded spelling (to
facilitate further research), or the most easily searched spelling?Make a suggestion.

7)Request a link to your genealogy website, either for the Links page or as a direct link from a
non-Dorenbos spouse in this database to an individual in yours (include your
bookmark and request one in mine).

8)Correct or suggest improvements to any other information published on
this website.

9)Correct or suggest improvements regarding links, design, or other
technical features of this website.

Be sure to include in your
email adequate data identifying the database entry you are referring to.

Privacy

Please report any privacy
concerns.If any living individual
requests to be taken out, I will be glad to comply immediately (with the
database entry, that is—not you!).As an example of a workable policy, my siblings
and I, all retired, have agreed to include ourselves, but not our children and
grandchildren, in the database.They can
decide for themselves later when they, uh, inherit this project.